


spring forward

by neyvenger (jjjat3am)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Fix-It, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-14 17:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13595049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/neyvenger
Summary: You know how sometimes you read something the second time and suddenly so many more details jump out to you? Well, if you live something twice, the same thing happens.or,Pierre wouldn't say he has any regrets but if he's in the past, he'll make damn sure to do things better this time around.





	spring forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tunafish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunafish/gifts).



> Dear promptee! I honestly wouldn't have ever written this pairing without your prompt, but paired with the time travel you mentioned you liked, it suddenly became something real that I could do. I got news of Auba's transfer halfway and writing this made things unexpectedly a lot easier to deal with for me. So thank you.
> 
> Big thanks also to Nani, who encouraged this from the beginning. I couldn't have done it without you. And all my love to [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold) who beta read this and encouraged me when I started losing confidence in this.
> 
>  
> 
> Title is from Nick Cave's 'Ship Song'

 

 

It goes like this:

 

Pierre falls asleep staring out the window of the plane to London, watching the fluffy clouds below, his mind shying away from the future. 

 

*

 

It goes like this:

 

Pierre wakes up alone. This is not unusual. Marco is skittish and most mornings, Pierre pretends to sleep and allows him to slip out.

 

Marco is trying to decide if he wants to take a chance. Pierre knows this. He tries not to let it hurt.

 

When the offer comes to go somewhere he’s really wanted - he takes it.

 

*

 

It goes like this:

 

Pierre wakes up alone and in bed. Disoriented, he catches sight of himself in the full-length mirror.

 

He sees his old haircut.

  
  


*

 

Pierre is in luck that there’s a certain amount of confusion expected of a player that’s just starting his career at a new club.

 

His distraction is attributed to jet lag, even though there’s barely an hour between Dortmund and Saint Etienne. He takes the excuse gratefully as he goes through his medical.

 

That’s weird too - he keeps pushing his body through paces it isn’t used to yet, the muscles on his calves he’s worked so hard for threatening to rebel on him. The doctor reprimands him for pushing too far but he’s smiling. Everyone is smiling, their teeth flashing in the neon lights.

 

Pierre shrinks into himself. There’s a bruise on his arm where he keeps pinching the skin, trying to make himself wake up.

 

At least his translator is there, repeating the questions in quiet Italian, calming and immediately protective. Pierre is grateful.

 

He hears the laugh before he sees the man.

 

Kloppo is waiting for him in one of the conference rooms, and that is somehow shocking, even though it makes sense to for him to be there when Pierre signs his contract.

 

For a moment, it looks like Kloppo might offer him a handshake, but he seems to read something in his expression because his eyes sharpen. He opens his arms.

 

Pierre sinks into the familiar with a sigh. Kloppo smells like pine trees and musk and after all this time, it still smells a little like home. He probably stays in the hug for a moment too long. Kloppo is grinning when he pulls back, slapping Pierre on the back for good measure. He catches sight of Željko just over his shoulder, expression unreadable.

 

Pierre offers him a shaky smile and Željko’s face clears. He smiles back. Next to him, Seb rocks on his heels, perpetually in motion.

 

*

 

Pierre gets introduced to the rest of the team just after practice. 

 

They’re warm and welcoming like he remembers. Kuba and Piszcu, attached at the hip, their silhouettes stark against the midday sun. Neven, smiling like he hasn’t shouldered the weight of the world yet. Kehli, looking like he has. He’s still got the tight lines in the corners of his mouth, drawn by an unshared burden. They wouldn’t smooth out until well over a year into his retirement.

 

Robert, the grip of his fingers a challenge and his blue eyes sharp. Their bizarre little rivalry had been buried under the weight of years for a long time for Pierre, so he just stares back in confusion. After a moment, Robert’s grip eases and his face softens into a smile.

 

And then there’s Marco.

 

Marco, who walks up, visibly nervous, hair in haphazard bleached blonde strands across his face, and mouth shaping awkwardly around a greeting.

 

“I like your shoes,” Marco blurts out and Pierre’s chest fills up with fondness for him, sudden and sharp like a knife wound.

 

“Thanks,” Pierre breathes out, stuck dumb.

 

“He’s been waiting to tell you that all day,” Robert interjects and Pierre is suddenly struck by his presence in the moment of this meeting, arguably the most important of Pierre’s grown life. He doesn’t remember him being there before.

 

But then again, Robert’s English is better than Marco’s at this point and he’s always been protective of him. So maybe it makes sense. Maybe Pierre’s erased him from the memory of it later.

 

“I like your hair,” Pierre tells Marco, and Marco brightens, launching into excited chatter about his barber and all the colors he had been considering before settling on blonde.

 

He’s barely following it now, with a couple of years of German lessons under his belt, never mind when he’d had none at all.

 

“You two deserve each other,” Robert says, dryly as they start towards the exit to the training grounds.

 

Marco keeps up the chatter, his hand brushing against Pierre’s as they walk. Pierre smiles at Robert, open and a little defiant. Robert smiles back, and it’s full-dimpled and sweet.

  
  


*

 

Pierre gets called into Klopp’s office a couple of days into...he’s not sure what to call it. Dream? Second chance? Madness? Whatever it is, he’s adjusting and the unexpected invitation drops into his barely ordered existence, threatening repeated disarray.

 

Something about it manages to feel like being sent to the principal’s office, though the sleek glassy hallways of the practice facility are far removed from the scuffed linoleum and peeling paint of his old school. And Klopp isn’t Mademoiselle Lavolette. The consequences of being found wanting here are worse than her disapproving looks could ever be.

 

Željko opens the door when he knocks, eyes dark and serious. Klopp is sitting at his desk, the setting sun behind him, shining briefly blinding through the large window. Pierre blinks at the thick dust mites in the air, trying to regain his bearings.

 

Željko clears his throat behind him. “So, how long have you been back here?” he asks.

 

It takes Pierre a moment to parse through the German.

 

“Back...here?” he asks, confused. He misses Marco by his side, cutting into conversation exactly when Pierre starts running out of words, following his train of thought effortlessly.

 

“Yes, back here,” Željko says, relentless, just on the edge of impatience, “in this timeline. In this cycle. Whatever you want to call it.”

 

Pierre stares at him, frozen with the sudden feeling of dread. 

 

“I know I’m not wrong,” Željko says, almost petulant.

 

The sun sinks beyond the horizon, its glare reduced to soft pinks and yellows. Klopp stirs behind his desk.

 

“No need to act like this is an interrogation, Željko,” he says, and his voice echoes weirdly in the dark shadows of the office.

 

Željko hmphs and rolls his eyes, but he goes to stand next to Klopp at the desk, an extension of his shadow.

 

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Klopp tells him. He waves to a chair in front of his desk and Pierre sinks into it gratefully, lightheaded.

 

Klopp had spoken in English, but Pierre grapples for his German anyway. It comes out rough, rusted in his throat. “This has...happened before?”

 

“Sometimes,” Željko says, watching him keenly, “when a person had some circumstances they wanted to change or a deep regret they wanted to set right.”

 

Unbidden, the image of the vulnerable arch of Marco’s back in the half-dark.

 

“I didn’t have anything like that,” Pierre says, and it’s mostly the truth. His dreams had come true, though frequently more brittle than what he thought they would be.

 

“Well, whatever it was, the club’s magic must have decided to bring you back here,” Željko says, shrugging. 

 

“And we’re glad to have you, don’t let Željko convince you otherwise,” Klopp cuts in with a jovial laugh. Pierre somehow manages to smile back.

 

“Magic?” he asks, carefully, still half-sure that this must be some sort of practical joke.

 

Željko sighs. “Sit down, it’s a long story,” he says.

 

*

 

It is a long story, and by the end, it’s gone deep into the evening. Klopp is puttering about the office, sorting papers and filing paperwork, and passing Željko cups of tea when his voice starts going hoarse. He doesn’t really look annoyed by how late they are, more like excited. Then again, Klopp would probably live at the office if Željko let him. 

 

Pierre has only really understood about a third of what he’s been told. Magic sounds less like fantasy and more like a complex algebraic calculation of probability. It follows a specific set of rules until it apparently decides to go rogue and dumps someone in the past. 

 

“Karmic overflow,” Željko calls it, “a surge of pure emotion, with no particular direction that rips a thread in the time/space continuum.”

 

Pierre tunes out after that.

 

Honestly, he doesn’t as much regret leaving as he did the whole situation around it. He does regret not getting to celebrate the league title with BVB. And he regretted getting Marco in pieces and not having the faintest idea how to put him back together. But none of those things felt like anything he had control over. So maybe it was just a fluke. 

 

His phone vibrates with a text message. Marco, a message in carefully worded English. Dinner. Pierre could do dinner.

 

“Take it a day at a time,” Željko had advised, “you don’t have to change anything if you don’t want to.”

 

Pierre wanted to change some things, but he honestly never thought about changing Marco.

 

*

 

His body is not his body but that doesn’t mean that Pierre forgets how to play football. The season starts off well and only gets better.

 

He knows how to play with Marco already, the familiar sense memory of him in his blind spot, feeding passes forward with a brilliance that Pierre has only ever been able to grasp in retrograde, watching the highlights alone in his home. He’s unbroken, playing football with a lack of fear and an abundance of joy that rarely came easy when he grew older. 

 

Pierre knows Robert too, from all the years of playing against him rather than with him. He knows the way he moves, his lumbering gait, too fast, too graceful across the pitch, and his eyes, the hunger in them, familiar.

 

It works. It works better than anyone could have expected. The fans keep singing louder and louder, voices rising like smoke above the rafters, Klopp’s laughter between the sound like punctuation.

 

January rolls around and they’re undefeated.

 

And something is missing. 

 

*

 

Pierre corners Robert in a nightclub. He’ll admit, it’s not the best place to have a conversation. The music is too loud, the bass thumping in slow vibrations in his bones, and it’s crowded, people brushing up against them as they stand, their disregard only an illusion of privacy.

 

Marco is somewhere in the crowd around them. He’d found a girl with pretty pink hair and honed on her like a beacon. Pierre didn’t mind seeing him go. He always came back. Marco left but Robert was still there, their trio almost inseparable in the last couple of months, on the pitch or exploring Dortmund’s abundant nightlife. And Robert’s sobriety quickly deteriorates once Pierre can convince him to let go of his beer and move on to sweet pink cocktail drinks instead.

 

Robert is soft and mellow against him, flushed from the heat and the alcohol. He’s smiling large and he’s an awful dancer, and Pierre watches the upward curve of his mouth and feels impossibly fond.

 

Pierre leans in close, enough to put his chin on Robert’s shoulder, feeling flushed from where their bodies are pressed together. His mouth brushes the shell of Robert’s ear and he can feel his body shiver.

 

“Why haven’t you left for Bayern?” Pierre asks him, barely quiet enough to be heard over the music. Robert stiffens, pulls back to stare at him, suddenly sober.

 

“How do you know about that?” Robert asks him, voice harsh. Pierre shrugs. 

 

“There was an offer, right?” he asks, and Robert nods, cautiously. “So?

 

“I…” Robert starts, swallows, tries again, “...the season is going so well. And it just, fits, you know, you and Marco and me, and everyone else, of course. We’re doing so well. I don’t need anything else. Does that make sense?”

 

Pierre stares at him. At his mouth, bitten red, at the fear in his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, “it makes sense. You and Marco and me.”

 

“Yeah?” Robert breathes, and suddenly he looks relieved, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and he sways under the force of it. Pierre touches his elbow, to steady him, and ends up holding it, as Robert’s face is suddenly much closer.

 

Their mouths press together. Perfectly on centre, as if a perfectionist like Robert would let it be any other way. The way he kisses is unfamiliar and Pierre is curious. Robert tastes like the pink drinks they had and his mouth is hungry and demanding and  _ oh.  _

 

Oh.

 

Robert pulls back, eyes dark in the dim light of the club, as reality starts to filter in. Pierre licks his lips instinctively, and Robert tracks the motion with his eyes. Pierre keeps his attention on his face, so he sees when the first hints of fear and regret appear. He reaches out, catches Robert’s hand and squeezes it.

 

“It’s okay,” he whispers and Robert must read it from his lips because the fear leaves him, but he keeps his cautious distance. He turns and gets swallowed by the crowd, leaving Pierre leaning against the wall and trying to catch his breath.

 

*

 

“Where did Lewy go last night?” Marco asks him the next morning. Pierre drinks in the sight of him, sleep rumpled and showing off his abs in the morning sunlight. Marco sees him watching and flexes, grinning.

 

“He left,” Pierre says. He’d met up with Marco a couple of minutes later and they went to his apartment. Pierre slept over on his couch, much too lazy to call a cab. He liked Marco’s apartment better than his anyway.

 

“Oh?” Marco makes an absent-minded humming noise, as he stretches to take a glass out of the cupboard and fill it with tap water. 

 

“He kissed me,” Pierre says, carefully. Marco takes a sip of his water, watching him. 

 

“Oh,” he says.

 

“Are you mad?” Pierre asks. “Because you and me are…”

 

He trails off abruptly. Because he and Marco, they aren’t anything. They haven’t even kissed.

 

Marco’s glass makes a loud clattering noise as he sets it down on the counter. And then he’s coming out of the kitchen, and he’s in Pierre’s lap on the couch, kissing him soft and sloppy around the smile on his mouth.

 

“You and me are, huh?” Marco says, playfully, grinning. Pierre reaches up to run his fingers through his hair and he makes a soft shaky noise.

 

“Yeah,” Pierre says, grinning, “you and me.”

 

It’s a weird conversation, but they’ve never really needed words to affirm the wonder of being able to coexist in the same place at the same time, understanding each other as easy as breathing. 

 

“You have awful morning breath,” Pierre adds, and Marco starts laughing, and he keeps laughing until Pierre flips him over on the couch to kiss him some more.

 

*

 

It’s after practice - that had started with Robert avoiding his eyes and ended with some semblance of normalcy after he seemed to realize that Pierre wouldn’t be punching him in the face - and almost a whole day, that they finally end up in bed together.

 

Pierre has missed this, Marco’s heat plastered against his back, his breathing soft and even in his ears. He can’t remember how he ever could have given it up, except that he had, and that it hurt. Now that hurt is soothed by the careful way Marco presses a kiss to the top ridge of his spine, in the way he carefully whispers into the darkness.

 

“You and me and Lewy?”

 

“Yeah,” Pierre say on an exhale, “we could.”

 

“Okay,” Marco says, softly, nosing against his neck, “okay.”

 

*

 

They don’t actually end up talking to Robert about it because the season looms large above them and they have to focus. 

 

They win the league. Of course. They’re unstoppable.

 

The whistle goes and Pierre falls on his knees, overwhelmed by the feeling of it. And then Marco is sprinting off the bench to tackle him onto the grass, and then Robert is falling on top of them, followed by the whole team, in one giant cuddle pile and everyone is laughing.

 

Laughing and smiling and crying in the warm summer air, as their fingertips marr the shined silver surface of the trophy. 

 

He and Marco press twin kisses to Robert’s cheeks for the cameras and his face turns scarlet but he doesn’t stop smiling, and Pierre catches him looking at them with such tenderness, it’d take his breath away if there was any left in his lungs after screaming.

 

The air turns to yellow gold confetti around them and the moment is perfect golden happiness, and Pierre isn’t worried about anything and he doesn’t have time to think about regrets.

 

*

 

Marco rents a yacht. 

 

“Can you even drive a boat?” Pierre asks him, as Robert struggles past them with armfuls of grocery bags and suitcases. He’s been on a health kick recently - Pierre was willing to bet that half of those bags contained ingredients for disgusting green smoothies that Pierre was still going to drink because that made Robert smile.

 

“I can drive a boat,” Marco says, breaking into his thoughts, “I have a boating licence.”

 

“But not a drivers licence?” Pierre asks him and Marco flushes guiltily. Pierre drove him to practice now and Robert had freaked out once he learned that Marco was driving without a licence and made him promise to take some actual lessons.

 

There’s a lull of quiet Marco fiddles with the buttons around the steering wheel and Pierre squints to make out the name of the boat next to them.  _ ‘Future’ _ , it says. It’s a strange name for a boat.

 

“I didn’t know you had a boating licence,” Pierre repeats out loud. Something about the not knowing feels significant but he can’t put his finger on why.

 

“You can’t know everything about everyone,” Marco tells him. It’s a throwaway line, delivered absent-minded as he gets the motor up and running, but Pierre freezes. Again, he gets that weird feeling that he’s forgotten something. Maybe the stove at the apartment was turned on? No, that couldn’t be right - he and Marco don’t cook.

 

“Try not to crash into anything before we even leave the harbour,” Robert says behind him. He comes up to rest his elbows on the railing next to Pierre. Their shoulders touch and Pierre leans into him.

 

Marco laughs, presses another button and turns the wheel, and they’re off, out of their parking spot and out of the harbour and out to the wide open sea.

 

*

 

So he and Marco don’t really talk about the thing with Robert, but sometimes they don’t really need to talk to understand each other.

 

By evening, Marco brings them back to anchor. Robert’s cooked, something delicious and probably disgustingly healthy at the same time and the mood is soft and mellow after a few beers. 

 

Marco is lying down with his head in Pierre’s lap. Robert has been staring at them, at the column of Marco’s throat and at Pierre’s hand resting on it, careless and intimate.

 

“What are you thinking about?” Marco asks, low and playful. Pierre looks down at him and their eyes meet, understanding passing through.

 

“Kissing you,” Pierre says, unable to keep from smiling.

 

Robert exhales, almost a gasp and Pierre looks up. There’s emotion bare on his face, heat mixed with no small amount of sadness. It seems cruel, to do this to him where he has nowhere to escape from them except the deep blue water.

 

“What are you thinking about now?” Marco says, and just like that, Pierre knows what the play is.

 

“Kissing Lewy,” he says, truthfully. Watches as Robert processes his words and freezes. 

 

Marco hums under his breath. “He’s a good kisser,” he says. “You’d look good kissing him.”

 

Pierre snorts. “I look good doing anything,” he points out with false bravado, tracking the emotions flying over Robert’s face.

 

“True,” Marco says, warm and fond, and Pierre moves his thumb to touch gently against his pulse point. His heart is beating rabbit fast in his chest and it’s reassuring because Pierre’s is too. “Do you think he might want to kiss both of us?”

 

“We should ask him,” Pierre says, gently, catching Robert’s gaze and holding it. He reaches out his hand. A few long seconds tick by, before Robert steps forward and takes it. 

 

Marco laughs, bright and happy, and then Robert is down on his knees in front of them, clutching at Pierre’s fingers like a lifeline, reaching down with his other hand to cup Marco’s face, kissing him deeply.

 

Pierre keeps his finger on Marco’s pulse, and he runs his hand through Robert’s hair, brushing it away from his face, and he feels immensely, unspeakably fond of them both.

 

“You two are going to be the death of me,” Robert says, pulling back from Marco’s mouth. Pierre cuts him off with a kiss before he can go on, and Marco laughs and laughs and laughs.

 

*

 

It goes like this:

 

Pierre wakes up in the middle of the night for no discernable reason. He’s squashed between two bodies on the floor, where they’ve moved the blankets and pillows after it became obvious that they wouldn’t be able to fit on a bunk made not made for two, much less for three. 

 

Marco is spooned up against his back, his soft snuffling snores in Pierre’s ears, and Robert’s bulk is plastered to his front. Robert is clingier than he would have expected, his fingers twisted up in Pierre’s shirt and his other hand tangled up with Marco’s on Pierre’s hip. His face is slack in sleep and he’s almost unnaturally quiet, except when Pierre shifts and he makes a sound so mournful and petulant that it has Pierre freezing.

 

He’s too warm, his clothes sticking to his skin and the smooth rocking motion of the boat is already lulling him back to sleep. His face almost hurts from smiling.

 

The future stretches before them, bright and welcoming, and he closes his eyes, images of a different future slowly fading from his memories, leaving him in peace.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and giving this a chance <3 
> 
> Lewy left the following January after Auba came, but I think the transfer was agreed on even before that? But I feel like in this fic, because they're doing so well and he has monster crushes on both Auba and Marco, he declines the offer.


End file.
